Pysis Night Vision Digital Monocular in GoldenEye

In the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye, Pierce Brosnan as Bond uses an MI6 issued digital camera / monocular to take photos of Xenia Onatopp and the speedboat that takes her to the Manticore Yacht, from his viewpoint at the Fort Antoine Theatre. The device is a Pysis night vision monocular.

The Pysis was designed in 1992/1993, by members of Pyser-SGI (www.pyser-sgi.com), one of the world’s leading manufacturers of night vision products. In 1994, the Bond production team approached the company and requested a high tech monocular for 007 to use in the movie. They selected the Pysis, a simple gen 1 image intensifier giving a green/black monochrome image only. The Pysis was superseded about 10 years later by a new gen 2 device (designed by the same team) called PNP-M which is is now available with gen 2 and 3 technology and is still a world-leader in its field of night vision monoculars.

In the movie GoldenEye, the device is capable of more than just a night vision monocular: Bond takes photos with it which he can send and later print out in his Aston Martin DB5 with the built-in Alpine 7817R CD Tuner which acted as a communication device and colour printer/fax.

From Wikipedia: A monocular is a modified refracting telescope used to magnify the images of distant objects by passing light through a series of lenses and sometimes prisms; the use of prisms results in a lightweight telescope. Volume and weight are less than half those of binoculars of similar optical properties, making it easy to carry. Monoculars produce 2-dimensional images, while binoculars add perception of depth (3 dimensions).

A Pysis monocular can be rented as a prop at Foxtrot Productions.